Multiplayer games are games in which two or more players play together, for example, against each other. A problem faced by the multiplayer games is to match up two or more players together in a meaning full manner. The meaning full manner refers to a situation wherein players in a game session have at least one characteristic feature that is common or close to common. Examples of such characteristic feature include skills of players, game levels, skill levels, highest scores of the players. As an example, it could be desirable to match up only those players who are within a certain game level.
At present, matching in a multiplayer game is performed by a server system, which has information about characteristics of players of the game. The players are clustered into different skill-level clusters. For a given player, the matching is performed within his/her cluster, by connecting players who are online at a given time and have indicated willingness to start playing the game.
A problem with this approach is that if the size of the cluster is too small, the given player may have to wait too long to find another player. On the other hand, if the size of the cluster is too large, the given player may be matched up with a player whose skill levels are not similar to his/her skill levels.